Vantage Viewpoint

Is chip technology the peak of security?

MasterCard and Visa have deadlines of October 2015 for businesses to adopt EMV technology at their cash registers. At that point a liability shift will occur that puts more ownership of a credit card breach on the business if it has not upgraded its systems.

However, according to an article from the Associated Press, the companies may be trying to speed up the shift and they have some help.

Richard Hunt, the CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association, brought the banker's perspective to the argument and said that in the case of major fraud, banks are only able to collect pennies on the dollar if a retailer is involved. This is even the case when the card is updated if the retailer in question has not done the same to its processes.

"We have to improve fraud prevention across the board," he says. "There are people who get up every day across the world with one mission and that's to break credit card technology. But there's no magic pill out there. The solution involves everyone."

This idea was also expressed in the piece by Ken Stasiak, the founder and CEO of SecureState. Businesses need to make sure that their entire payment process is secure. Even having EMV solutions in place would not have prevented the highly publicized Target breach that was caused by a networking problem.

Chip and pin is only part of a complete POS security plan. Companies also need to ensure PCI compliance, network security and several other factors before payment processes are secure.